The 5 Most Interesting Parts of Nikki Haley’s Interview With The Atlantic

The outgoing ambassador to the UN sat down for a lengthy interview with The Atlantic. Here are some of the most interesting things she said.

By NTK Staff | 12.07.2018 @12:15pm

Outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and an accomplished politician and diplomat, recently sat down for a lengthy interview with The Atlantic.

The magazine and online news site published the full transcript of their interview with Haley on Friday, and the interview covered a range of global issues that Haley worked on at the UN. It also covered Haley’s relationship with Trump, and the rumors of her potential ambitions after Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office.

Here are the five most interesting parts of Haley’s interview with The Atlantic.

MOST FRUSTRATING

Haley kicked off the interview by discussing “[o]ne of the most frustrating things” about her tenure. The unsurprising answer? Russia.

“One of the most frustrating things that I’ve had to encounter at the UN is the Russian veto. Whenever we’ve tried to do good things, Russia is right there to stop it. The perfect example of that is the chemical-weapons issue in Syria. We went over half a dozen times. I’ve lost count of how many times we tried to get an unbiased mechanism in there to prevent chemical weapons, and at every step of the way, they were standing right next to Assad and protecting him. There’s a lot of frustrations there, but I’ve always thought—the one thing I learned at the UN is that countries resent America. It’s a tough place. But they want us to lead. And we have to always lead on our values and our freedoms and what we believe is right.”

Russia has veto power on the UN Security Council, and often defeats U.S.-led measures to punish Syria for its role in its civil war.

CLOSE TO WAR?

While discussing the challenges the U.S. is facing with North Korea, The Atlantic‘s Uri Friedman asked Haley if the U.S. came close to war with its rival on the other side of the Pacific.

Friedman: “You said, ‘I don’t know what the president’s gonna do,’ and you knew. Were we actually close to war?”

Haley: “No. Having said that, if they had launched something, if it had come near the U.S., the president totally would have. But at the time, were we gonna instigate something? No.”

It’s comforting to know the U.S. was not close to war, but the situation with North Korea remains precarious (and one that can change in an instant).

TRUMP PRAISE

Haley did go out of her way to praise her most recent boss, telling The Atlantic that President Trump doesn’t get “enough credit” for “always [being] willing to listen.”

“He was always willing to listen. He was always unbelievably supportive and would always hear me out. I don’t think he gets enough credit for that, because there were many times I pushed back that he could’ve easily said “This is what I’m doing,” and he never did that. He never did that. He would then give his argument or his thoughts, I’d give him mine, and we’d come together in the middle on where we could meet. It has been an amazingly good relationship, and really, I would not have been successful at the UN had I not had the support of the president.”

…AND DIFFERENCES?

Haley also did not hesitate to explain her differences with the president, though.

“I think that we have two different styles, and I think his style is unique, but I think people see that. But I get where he wants to go, and I just have my different style of getting us there. I think we agree on most things. There are certainly things that we don’t agree on. And when we talk about it, he’s the president. If he’s still that way, my job is to go and do what he needs me to do. But for the most part, he’s been very willing to listen and very willing to come around. If you give good arguments, you have to say why it matters, what it will do, what the connections are, and explain yourself. If you do it in a very thorough way, he will usually go and get a couple of other people’s take on it, and then that’s it, and then he’ll go with it.”

HALEY 2024?

The outgoing ambassador has been the subject of rampant speculation; namely, that she will run for president down the road. She didn’t quite put the matter to bed with The Atlantic, merely stressing that she’s “not even thinking about it.”

“Truly no one believes me: I am not even thinking about it. You know what I think about? I think about sleeping in. I do. I think about sleeping in, I think about binge watching TV for a day, I think about not having the stress level that I’ve had for the last eight years. For the last eight years, seven days a week, I always pick up my phone with a pit in my stomach, worrying that something bad is gonna happen. And I wait for the day when I don’t have to be so scared of my phone. That’s the reality of it.”

Political observers may recognize that, by saying “I am not even thinking about it,” Haley is not ruling out a future run for president.